Dse To Finalise V-Sat Provider

The Delhi Stock Exchange (DSE) board will finalise its choice of the Very small aperture terminal (V-sat) provider on April 25. Four companies - Wipro-BT, Comsat Max, Hughes Escorts, HCL-Comnet are in the race to bag the Rs 1 crore order. The move is aimed at providing satellite-aided trading system to the DSE members.

The Delhi bourse will become the fourth after the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay and Calcutta exchanges to offer on-line hook-up to brokers via satellite for real-time relay of stock quotes.

The DSE board has shortlisted four firms from a list of eight licenced V-sat providers. An exchange official said the bourse has studied the proposals of all the four firms and has almost finalised its choice. But he official did not reveal the choice saying a final decision will have be made by the board. DSE will install a network of 200 V-sats initially and expand the network later depending upon the response, he said.

 

A decision on whether to charge a fee from the members or to lease the facility will be made at the board meeting, the official said.

V-sats are the latest and most cost effective means of data communication. For stock exchange applications, the V-sats enable inexpensive exchange of huge volumes of data, voice and pictures.

The NSE, which has awarded the vendor contract to HCL-Comnet, was the first to use the V-sat mode. The move was received overwhelmingly by brokers. The Bombay Stock Exchange, fearing loss of business, followed soon after and chose Hughes Escorts as its V-sat provider. CSE too has appointed HCL-Comnet as its V-sat vendor. The domestic exchanges are moving towards V-sat-aided trading systems as the existing modem links are weak owing to frequent disruptions in telephone lines.